


vulpicide

by sensira



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Conspiracy, Gore, Hallucinations, Human Experimentation, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements, Suspense, Thriller, Uchiha Sasuke-centric, Violence, naruto is actually very minor in this as he is...missing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:33:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensira/pseuds/sensira
Summary: Naruto Uzumaki is declared missing in late Autumn. Sasuke Uchiha, detective-in-training, journeys to the mysterious, forest-covered town of Konoha in order to find him, and uncovers more than he ever could have expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> vulpicide-(n) the act of killing foxes

Halfway through the graveyard shift, Kakashi kicks his legs up on top of Sasuke’s desk, shoving aside neatly stacked files and papers. The police inspector is infuriating most of the time; he’s frequently late, half snark and half horrible excuses, and insists on wearing a black surgical mask everywhere he goes. It curls up around Kakashi’s ears, cupping the bridge of his nose to the tip of his chin. Sasuke’s never seen him without one, though his superior frequently comes in wearing ones with ridiculous patterns—like pink flowers, or little dogs. Once, Kakashi entered the office with a Hello Kitty mask, and Kiba had nearly inhaled his coffee in shock.

The masks are a blatant uniform violation, but the police chief never bothers to reprimand Hatake, having long given up by now.

Sasuke still asks—frequently—and Kakashi always smiles and says sweetly, _“Aw, Sasuke! I’m sick, if I take the mask off I’ll endanger the rest of the department, and we don’t want that, do we?”_

For all Hatake is supposedly sick, he always sounds perfectly fine.

“What’s on the agenda today?”

“If you would move your foot,” Sasuke answers, tugging at a manila folder underneath the black sole of Kakashi’s boots. “We might just find out.”

Kakashi shrugs lazily, how he’s kept this inspector job, Sasuke doesn’t know, but he lifts his feet just enough to let the folder slip out from underneath.

Brushing aside some dirt, Sasuke flips the file open, and Kakashi peers over his shoulder. Tonight’s face mask has silver stitching that matches his hair. “Well, we still need to finish writing the reports for the robbery earlier this week,” Sasuke says.

“We?” Kakashi teases. “Writing reports is something for our lovely deputies to do,” he lifts his hand and plops it down atop Sasuke’s hair. “Why else would I keep you around? Anything else?”

“Someone called in a bike robbery. Small stuff.”

“Finding stolen bikes?” Kakashi mutters. “That’s more up Gai’s—“

Kakashi freezes, but the cursed word is already out of his mouth. An unholy summoning.

“Did you say my name, dear Kakashi?”

Sasuke’s boss jolts up from his seat in alarm, too late, Gai’s impressive six-foot stature already casts a comically ominous shadow over the pair. Kakashi’s eyes widen in alarm.

Maito Gai is the kind of cop you see in heartwarming social media posts that fish for likes. He’s the person who climbs trees to save cats, stops bullies, and escorts lost people to their original destination. The department always sends him to do school presentations, or to press talks where Gai’s optimism and enthusiasm—as excessive as it is, is needed. There is one particular incident where he chased down a pickpocket for seven blocks, before detaining the thief and returning the stolen purse, not even wrinkling his immaculate uniform.

Gai is a good cop, and a good person, which is a rare combination in this field of work. But he’s also loud, annoying, and has a demonic competitive streak with Kakashi that Sasuke, somehow, always gets pulled into.   

“Gai! I wasn’t expecting to see you here!” Kakashi’s eyes wrinkle up into a smile, voice strained.

“I work here!”

Sasuke raises an eyebrow. “No way, really?”

“I mean,” Kakashi says, loudly, speaking over Sasuke. “I thought you worked day shifts.”

“I know! But you seem to take only night shifts these days, and work would not be the same without the daily challenge of my rival!” Gai cocks a hip, winking; a new intern swoons across the office, and Kakashi winces at the sight.

The conversation degrades into a familiar one: Gai enthusiastically challenges his rival, proclaiming his admiration, and Kakashi replies with a, “ _No Gai, I am not going to have a paper clip sorting competition, that’s ridiculous.”_

Sasuke knows this game all too well, eventually, and inevitably, Gai will accidently knock all the papers off his desk, or spill his coffee, or, which happened once and will happen never again if Sasuke has any say, knock into his chair and send Sasuke tumbling to the floor.

Half of the office is watching amusedly, it’s a familiar sight. Kiba Inuzuka leans up against the doorframe snickering softly, he has one of the trainee K-9 puppies—Akamaru, this time—with him. The white dog looks comical in the oversized vest, but he’ll grow into it. Sasuke slinks out of Gai and Kakashi’s sight, and settles against the wall next to Inuzuka.

“Thought you weren’t supposed to bring the dogs in here.”

Kiba shrugs sheepishly. “As long Chief Sarutobi doesn’t catch me, I’ll be fine.”

Across the room, Gai starts chasing Kakashi around a desk.

Sasuke sighs at the sight. “I should have picked Inspector Kurenai to be my mentor.”

“Tough luck now,” Kiba says around a granola bar. “She’s already snatched up Shino.”

Kurenai Yuuhi is one of the top investigators in the district. She’s clever, with an eye for the unseen, and plays the sort of mind games that have confessions tumbling from suspects in less than an hour.

Kakashi is supposed to be on the same level as her, but Kurenai actually _does_ her work.

She seems to be always working a case, which means Sasuke hears about Aburame more than he’s seen him. Kurenai’s protégé, Shino, is methodically intelligent, he has a good eye for solving the cases he shadows Kurenai on. (Cases, which, Sasuke notes, he actually gets to go on.) Kiba calls him aloof, an asshole with no personality, but there’s an expensive, delicate beetle-shaped paperweight on his often-empty desk that says there’s more to Aburame than meets the eye.

Across the room, Gai jumps Sasuke’s desk and corners Kakashi, gesticulating wildly.

“Well,” Kiba pauses, moving his granola bar away from the eager puppy. “Hatake has a pretty impressive record too, I bet he takes you on some cool cases, right?”

Sasuke huffs dryly. “If only. I haven’t been out to the field once.”  

“What? Hasn’t he been your mentor for half a year now? That’s ridiculous.”

“Trust me, I’m aware.”

“Huh,” Kiba says. “Maybe if you asked, Kurenai could take on two—“

“IT IS _ON_ , DEAR RIVAL!”

 Gai tugs a folder out of Kakashi’s hands, and the silver haired man dashes across the room, on a warpath towards Sasuke.

Kiba blinks, glances at Sasuke’s face as it drains of color, and shoves the rest of his granola into his mouth. “Well, that’s my cue to go. Good luck.” Akamaru yips as he passes, it sounds almost apologetic.

Kakashi catches Sasuke by the crook of his arm, dragging him out towards the front doors. “We have to go.” 

“What did you do now,” Sasuke says flatly.

“Gai challenged us to see who can apprehend the most criminals tonight, I agreed.”

Sasuke sighs. “And why am I included in this?”

“I didn’t want to leave my darling student behind,” Kakashi answers sweetly. “What would I do without you?”

“Avoid doing your job,” Sasuke accuses. “Read that little orange book of yours and try not to think of—“

Kakashi clamps a gloved hand over Sasuke’s mouth, the tips of his ears are colored a vibrant red. “Ah, Gai,” Kakashi greets, stopping by the doors. “Are you ready?”

“Of course!” Gai shouts, foot halfway out the door. “If I cannot surpass the combined prowess of you and your student, I will spend the next week of shifts on my hands!”   

Gai bursts out the doors, running into the night with a loud shout. Kakashi follows, pulling Sasuke behind him, but veers to the right, running the opposite direction. They go down three blocks, cross two streets, and turn into an alleyway.

Panting slightly, Sasuke settles against the brick walls of the alley, breath exhaling in steady clouds of steam. The autumn air is crisp, enters through Sasuke’s lungs, and chills him to the core. It’s about time to swap from the lighter fall jacket to a heavier, winter coat.

“What was that about?”

Kakashi buries his hands in the deep pockets of his coat. “Had to escape Gai somehow. We’ll wait him out and go back when it’s safe.”

“You’re going to let him win?” Sasuke asks. Each breath he takes coats his lungs in ice, it’s unseasonably cold tonight.

“Oh,” A vicious glint appears in Kakashi’s eyes. “I’m just not in the mood tonight, I’ll even the score eventually, when the time is right.”

Sasuke rolls his eyes. “When the time is right?” The dynamics of Kakashi’s rivalry is childishly charming at its best, immature and annoying at its worst. It’s usually the latter.

His mentor chuckles lowly and leans up against the wall beside him. The alley is quiet, but the street ahead rumbles with the occasional passing car, and the faint strains of bar music on the air. Kakashi tugs a cigarette box out of his pocket, a little cartoon deer is printed on the front, and a picture of someone’s rotting, grey lungs are on the back.

“ _Smoking Kills!”_

It starts to snow.

Kakashi fishes a cigarette from the box and offers it to Sasuke.

“Do you smoke?”

“No,” Sasuke answers, glancing down at Kakashi’s hand. “I don’t.”

Kakashi chuckles. “Good, neither do I.”

He lights the cigarette anyway, rolling it between his gloved fingers. It’s a vibrant beacon in the inky blue light of the night, casting strange shadows over the twisted planes of Kakashi’s mask; the smoke mingling with the steamy exhales of his breath. He looks strangely pensive, eyes glassy as he watches ash spiral to the floor.

“Why do you carry cigarettes if you don’t smoke?”

“Oh?” Kakashi hums, flicking ash to the concrete. “These are Asuma’s.”

A flat look.

“You know, the Chief’s son. Kurenai pays me to steal them,” he continues. “It’s easy money.”

“The Chief’s son?”

“Chief Sarutobi has a son?”

“Oh,” Kakashi’s eyes narrow in thought. “He works off-site, I thought you might have met him already.”

Sasuke doesn’t know most of the police staff, and while part of that is his own aversion to pointless socialization, Kakashi’s laziness takes part of the blame. You can’t meet any of the specialists, forensics teams, and the detectives if you never get to go on a case.

“That reminds me,” Kakashi continues, as he talks, the steam from his breath leaks from the outer edges of his face mask. “The Chief asked how Naruto’s been doing.”

A million-dollar question. Sakura talks to him more than he does these days. “Well, I think.” Sasuke guesses. “You should be asking Sakura, not me.”

“Talking to Sakura means talking to Lee, which eventually means talking to Gai,” Kakashi replies. “He’s been at the wildlife center for how long now?”

“About as long as I’ve been assigned to you.”

Kakashi hums. “Y’know, how long have you worked under me?”

“Six months,” Sasuke answers. “Give or take. Did you forget to keep track?”

Kakashi nods, flicking ash to the ground. “Six months, huh? Maybe it’s about time I took you—“ He stops suddenly, cigarette drooping loosely in his fingers. “Did you hear that? Listen.”

 Sasuke strains his ears, filtering out the ever-present rumble of the sleeping city.

 Someone is shrieking.

Kakashi sprints out of the alley, dropping the cigarette to the ground, and Sasuke follows at his heels. Nearly skidding into a metal pole, they follow the sound to a side street, full of shuttered, shops, closed for the night, and flickering street lamps.

An expensive car is pulled up to the curb, windows dark and tinted. The passenger side door has swung open, and a man, dressed in black, wrangles with a tiny teenage girl, who is kicking and screeching.

“Oh shit,” Kakashi hisses. “Where’s Gai when you need him.”

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Sasuke yells, his voice echoes strangely against the empty street, taking on some alien quality.

The mysterious man jumps in surprise, and the girl bites his hand, hard enough to draw blood.  Swearing he pushes the girl out of his arms, and punches her in the face for good measure, before leaping into the car. It tears away with a squeal, rubber burning on the tar.

“Go check on the girl,” Kakashi commands.  At Sasuke’s nod, he breaks into a dead sprint after the car, hand reaching for a pistol at his side.

The girl is coughing, pushing herself up onto her knees. Sasuke kneels beside her, hand awkwardly hovering near her shoulders. Her hair is dead from hair dye, rough to the touch but a vibrant green, acid in the light. A vicious bruise is blooming across her right cheek, the dark color bringing out the bright orange color of her eyes, and she spits out a glob of blood.

“Oh man, thanks for the help, I got him good though,” she grins viciously, blood staining the canines of her teeth.

“I’m with the police, what’s your name?” Sasuke glances her over, she seems otherwise unharmed, aside from the bruise. “Can you tell me what happened?””

“The name’s Fū!” She seems oddly lighthearted, despite nearly being kidnapped. “I had a fight with my foster parents, and I went for a walk to cool down when that jerk pulled up.”

Sasuke frowns. “Did you get a good look at who tried to grab you?”  
“Uh,” Fū answers. “He had silver hair, glasses, looked kind of like a dork.”

Well, that could be anyone in the city, even Kakashi, if he put on a pair of glasses.

Speaking of the devil, Kakashi reappears around a corner, brow furrowed and looking frustrated.

“I lost them,” he looks embarrassed to admit it.

“They were in a car, it’s to be expected,” Sasuke says. “Help me get her to the station, can you walk?”

“Yup!” Fū jumps to her feet, swaying uncertainly, but makes it the few blocks to the police station without needing help. She’s not dressed for the weather, wearing a matching white shirt and shorts, but she turns down Kakashi’s offer to borrow his coat.

“I’ve never been to a police station before,” Fū says brightly.

Kakashi, jarringly serious, laughs dryly. “Sorry to say, but it likely won’t be very fun. Aburame!” He calls. Kurenai’s apprentice is oddly present. “Get this girl to Kurenai for a statement.”

“Thanks again,” Fū grins, and is led away by the stoic Aburame.

Kakashi immediately pulls Sasuke over to Genma, who monitors street cameras. “I need to find an expensive car,” he says grimly.

“Don’t we all,” Genma drawls. “What for?”

“Attempted kidnapping.”

The two of them huddle together, Sasuke leaning over the pair’s shoulders, eyes flickering over any camera feedback they can find. Across the room, Fū’s wrapped up in a blanket, holding a cup of something warm, and enthusiastically makes her statement to a bemused looking Kurenai.

“Is this the car?” Genma asks, pointing to a frame of the familiar vehicle. When Kakashi nods, the technician frowns. “Well, there’s footage of it up until the highway cameras, they must have gotten on but gotten off before the next camera location. We can trace the plates though, something’s got to come up?”

Nothing comes up. The plates might as well be a random series of nonsense that someone put together, as they don’t match any other registered plates in the records. There’s no trace. As the night turns into an early morning, Gai returns in a blaze of explosive glory, throwing one arm over Kakashi.

“Kakashi! You would not believe how many—“

“Gai, I’m not in the mood,” Kakashi snaps. The whites of his eyes are starting to turn red from exhaustion. For a brief second, Gai looks miffed, but backs down at the red-eyed glare of his rival.

“What happened?”

Sasuke yawns. “We stopped a kidnapping.”

Gai’s mouth forms a tiny little ‘o’. “Well, I suppose that makes us even.”

“It’s a tie,” Kakashi drawls sarcastically, and Gai takes his leave, planning to return when his rival is in a better mood. The new intern swoops in, asking Gai if he’d like to get coffee sometime. He refuses, like always, he’s seeking a more eternal kind of love.

The intern will try again tomorrow.

Kurenai taps Sasuke on the shoulder, she smiles softly. “Sasuke, do you mind if I steal away Kakashi for a moment?” He wonders how she knows his name, but nods.  

“I’ll debrief you later,” Kakashi says absentmindedly. “Go take a break. Check on Fū”

“Debrief?”  

“For your first case,” Kakashi says, and is whisked away by Kurenai.

Fū sits across the room, she looks wide awake for such a long exhausting night. Sasuke sits down next to her, wincing at the feeling of the hard-plastic chair against his back. “Thanks again,” she says brightly. “For helping me out back there.”

“Hn, it was nothing,” Sasuke replies, and settles into silence. She reminds him too much of Naruto,

“Are you okay? Are you bothered by what happened?” She laughs, taking his silence for some other emotion. “You’re more shaken up than me! Haven’t you seen stuff like this before?”

 “No,” Sasuke starts. “This is my first case. You’re my first case.”

“Huh, you seem like the real deal. I wouldn’t have guessed this was your first.”

Sasuke hums in response, his phone buzzes in his coat pocket, a reprieve from the awkward small talk.

 “Excuse me,” he says, rising up. Fū waves as he goes. Pulling his phone out, Sasuke’s stoic expression softens into surprise as Sakura’s name lights the screen.

He answers.

“Sakura, what are you doing up?”

“ _Sasuke_ ,” her voice wobbles over the speaker.

Sasuke blinks. “Sakura, what’s wrong?”

Sakura’s crying, which immediately sets off alarm bells. Sakura never cries—well, that’s a lie. She cries over videos of lost pets being reunited with their owners, or after an exceptionally funny joke or like the times when Naruto choked and milk came out of his nose. Sakura never cries like _this,_ small sobs and whispering hiccups, so rife with sadness.

“ _Sasuke_ ,” she sobs. “ _Naruto’s gone missing.”_

The sense of sickening surprise reminds Sasuke very much of a math test. The exact moment after you plug the equation in and the answer the calculator gives isn’t any of the multiple-choice answers, and your brain jitters, “ _Oh, that can’t be right.”_

“What?”

_“They called me, a police department down where he lives,”_ she rambles between breaths. “ _I’m his emergency contact—you know? And—and, they just called me, he’s missing Sasuke. His boss says he hasn’t been into work for a week and he hasn’t been home.”_

Sasuke feels all the air rush out of his body, blood pounding in his head.

“ _Sasuke, where did he **go?** ” _

His phone slips out of his fingers and clatters against the tile of the station. The glass screen cracks. 

This will be a long night.  


	2. The Konoha Wildlife Rehabilitation Center

Somehow, Sasuke ends up in a plastic chair, white, stained, cheap, because the station really can’t afford any better. A cup of coffee is pressed into his hands, probably by Kakashi, because the only other person Sasuke really talks to here is Kiba, and the Inuzuka would never. It’s hot, liquid scalding the skin of his palms through the thin paper shell. Sasuke takes a sip, and then spits it back into the cup, splashing part of it on his hands. It tastes like sludge laced with caffeine, thick and congealing on his tongue. Kiba’s work most likely, the man has the flavor palate of the dogs he raises.

 

The station clock strikes four in the morning, and ticks on and on and on.

 

Sasuke’s phone’s screen is cracked, a jagged fracture that runs across the glass. It’s usable still, he used it to open the link to the Konoha Local Police Station that Sakura sent, and wordlessly showed Kakashi the pinned message on the board that announced Naruto’s disappearance. 

 

His missing person’s poster will be released in a few days, Sakura has to send them a suitable picture first.

 

Kakashi falls into the chair beside him, plastic legs screeching against the tile. His eyes are bloodshot, more than usual, strained from hours of surveillance watching. The car that tried to kidnap Fū seems to have completely disappeared, there’s no signs of it on any local cameras, and the four other precincts he called haven’t seen anything turn up.

 

“I spoke to Chief Sarutobi,” Kakashi begins. “He said to send you in when you’re ready.”

 

He offers no words of consolation, no hint of sympathy tinges his voice, nor pity. For a moment, Kakashi just looks like a tired man content to hide away from the world.

 

Sasuke nods, stands and crosses the station. Business as usual, no one had noticed his choking, quiet outburst apart from Kakashi. Most of these people will never know Sasuke’s best friend is _missing. Disappeared. ~~Dead?~~ _

He presses the door to the chief’s private office open and enters. Chief Hiruzen Sarutobi is an old, old man. Dotted with age spots, creased by wrinkles, he’s been with the police for a long time, and it shows. He’s a cheery man, wise, but there’s a constant undertone that he’s seen too much. That’s the downside of public service, it opens your eyes to the absolute deplorability of the human race.

 

“Sasuke.” He greets, gesturing at the chair in front of his desk. Leather and wood this time, no expense spared. Sasuke settles into it like a throne, it feels like one, compared to rickety office chairs. “I heard about Naruto, I’m sorry, he’s a good kid.”

 

He forgets often that Sarutobi knows Naruto. There’s a little framed picture of him at a local orphanage on his desk, dressed in uniform, surrounded by smiling kids, gap-toothed. Naruto’s on his left, holding onto his leg, bright grin, crooked teeth, maybe five or six.

 

“Thank you,” Sasuke says out of instinct, words devoid of any true meaning. Sarutobi raises an eyebrow, doesn’t mention the insincerity of his words. Sasuke forgets too, that Sarutobi’s known him for years now, and before that Itachi, and before that Sasuke’s parents and before that—

 

Chief Sarutobi lights a pipe. The building is technically a No Smoking Zone, but Sasuke supposes, once you get old enough, you really stop giving a shit about those kind of things. “I called the Konoha department,” he stops to exhale a puff of smoke. “They agreed to send you down there to help investigate, since you’ve known him for so long.”

 

“What’s the catch.”

 

“You need to pack up his apartment, his landlord wants to move in someone else.”

 

Sasuke sighs. “Fine. When can I leave?”

 

“They requested you in two days, it’s a thirty-hour drive from here.” Sarutobi replies.

 

Inconvenient, but not impossible. It gives Sasuke six hours to sleep and two hours to check in on Sakura before he goes. “Thank you,” Sasuke says, sincere this time. He rises, bows slightly, and leaves.

 

“Find him, Sasuke,” Sarutobi calls. “He’s like a son to me.” He glances over at a photo on his desk. His biological son, Asuma Sarutobi, a journalist, religiously avoids his father, despite most of his work involves crimes handled at the station. Sasuke doesn’t know why, really can’t bring himself to care about family fallouts when he has no family of his own.

 

Sasuke nods, shuts the door behind him. The office is slowing down somewhat, night shift employees heading home to sleep the day away as day shift workers enter, bleary from sleep, but chipper, holding greasy take-out breakfast that chokes the room in its smell. Kakashi hasn’t moved from the plastic chair, but Gai has settled beside him, quiet, engrossed in some sort of police report. Kakashi’s sleeping, or at least appears to be, for his head droops sideways, inches away from pillowing against Gai’s broad shoulder, and his mentor would never willingly be that close to Gai unless he was unconscious.

 

Gai waves as he passes, smile as bright a sunrise, and says nothing. For the first time in ages, Sasuke leaves the police station in peace. It feels wrong, somehow.

 

He tugs his keys out, finds his car in the parking lot, and drives. Sasuke keeps the radio off, the low hum of an engine and the strange silence of early morning accompanying him home.  His apartment complex is dark, apart from the window of Anko’s apartment that glows a dusty orange, but only because she keeps snakes and leaves their heat lamps on all night. Anko is strange one, with her snakes, and the music she plays constantly, every hour of the day when she’s home. Their neighbor, Ebisu, had confronted her about the noise once, Sasuke eavesdropping through the thin wood of his door. She said she needed it to ground herself, hear something else beside her own heartbeat and the hissing of snakes, and that Ebisu could go fuck himself.

 

Sasuke adores silence, and he falls onto his bed, letting the dead quit of night whisk him into sleep.

 

It feels like he wakes up a minute later, but the noon sun drifting through his window and the series of texts on his phone say otherwise.

 

_Sakura_

\--> _Come see me, please._

_\-- > Kakashi called. _

Sasuke rolls out of bed, one foot with a sock, and the other bare, the other half of the pair tangled somewhere in the linen oblivion that is Sasuke’s sheets. A car roars down the street, the sound echoing inside his empty apartment.

 

There’s no time to brew coffee, an unfortunate reality. Sasuke slips into the shower and lets cold water jolt him awake, a poor substitute for caffeine but effective nonetheless. He leaves his apartment with damp hair, goosebumps raised up on his skin.

 

Sakura lives on the same side of town, a cozy apartment on the fourth floor with a balcony covered in flowers and plants. She’s lived there for years, it’s close to the hospital where she works, and the only changes to it were the ones Lee brought with him when he moved in with her two years ago. Workout equipment strewn by scrubs and hospital schedules, protein powder next to herbal teas.

 

Sasuke knocks on her door, it swings open, as if Sakura had been waiting by the door. Her eyes are red, eyelids swollen from crying, and her hair is tugged back into a messy ponytail. “Come in,” she says. “Lee’s at work.”

 

He follows her into the apartment, sliding his shoes off next to a pair of heels. The room is bright, windows flung open to invite in the noonday sun. Sakura leads him into the kitchen, but Sasuke pauses at the massive fish tank that holds a tiny blue fish set on a side table.

 

“You got a fish?”

 

“Lee wanted one,” Sakura replies. “Thinking about calling it Kisame but we’re not sure yet.”

 

They sit down at her tiny kitchen table. Most of the space is taken up by a box, old photos strewn around that were packed up when she moved and never got around to unboxing. It’s a slideshow of high school memorabilia, an old track medal, ticket stubs, dozens of silly photos of Sakura and Naruto and Sasuke when they were young.

 

“Do you want any tea? Sakura asks. “You know what kinds—”  

 

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

 

She nods, and rummages around in the box. Sakura holds out a printed copy of Naruto’s senior graduation picture. He’s grinning at the camera, a fake suit pinned against his shoulders, hair somehow tamed for the shot. It’s a good picture, optimism shining from his eyes, a boy with a future, and Sasuke’s throat tightens.

 

Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke met in the first year of high school, unfortunately assigned together as lab partners when there was an odd number of students in chemistry. It had been a _long_ semester; Naruto accidentally set Sakura’s long hair on fire, Sakura spilled a chemical on Sasuke that required him to use the emergency shower. They couldn’t make it through a project to save their lives. Overall, it had been a mess, until Naruto sabotaged Ino’s project for teasing Sakura, Sasuke distracting the teacher while he did it, and everything fell into place, the three of them becoming nigh inseparable for the next four years.

 

At graduation, Naruto had cried, babbling about college and being roommates, but Sasuke went off to a prestigious university, Sakura interned at a hospital, training to be a nurse, while Naruto dropped out of community college, working full-time to try and survive.

 

“I feel like we should have known,” Sakura says. “That something happened. If something was wrong.”

 

Part of Sasuke agrees.  “The texts, that should have been the first sign.”

 

When Naruto first moved, he sent hundreds of texts, updates, sweet emails filled with pictures he had taken, little stories about his day. He talked about the most mundane things, like the frog wallet he bought in a gift store, described the entire menu of the local ramen restaurant in exact detail, wrote entire essays about his job and his boss.

 

They had dropped off suddenly near Halloween. Shorter messages, longer reply times, each getting less and less detailed until everything was vague and distant, and then they stopped all together.

 

Sakura sighs, burying her hand in her hair. “Did we do something wrong? We should have reached out to him more.”

 

There are a lot of “should have’s” in Sasuke’s life, Sakura’s too. Maybe they should have tried harder to keep in contact, but Naruto moved across half the country to work at a wildlife refuge in the middle of nowhere, Sakura started working full-time at the hospital, and Sasuke got snatched up into the police business where his father lived and died.

 

Life got busy, people grow up together or they grow apart. “The department is sending me down there. To help.”

 

Sakura blinks. “Really?”

 

“They think I can help, since I know Naruto.” Sasuke pauses. “They also want me to clear out his apartment.”

 

“Naruto’s going to be upset,” Sakura’s face falls. “He’ll come home and his apartment will be empty.”

 

The unspoken _if_ Naruto returns goes unsaid between them.

 

“When do you leave?”

 

“A couple hours or so,” Sasuke answers. “I need to pack and then I’ll start drive.”

 

Something other than sadness glints in Sakura’s eye. “You know,” she begins. “Lee’s been asking about you, you can stay for dinner, it’s been a while since we’ve spent time together.”

 

Lee is a lot like Gai, and Sasuke’s eternally grateful he’s not interested in roping Sasuke into a demented rivalry like Gai and Kakashi. Otherwise, Lee is obnoxiously endearing. He’s been sweet on Sakura from the moment he ran into her a track meet, and they work well together.

 

And, despite hardly seeing Sakura over the past month, Sasuke _knows_ dinner at her place entails a spicy curry from hell that he will be absolutely intolerant to. “Sorry,” he says. “But I should get going, maybe some other time.”

 

Sakura rises once Sasuke does. “You owe me a dinner date, then.” She smiles, escorting him the four feet to her front door. Sasuke pauses in the doorway, and Sakura brings him into a hug, standing on her tip-toes. There was a time when she was taller than Sasuke and Naruto.

 

“Be careful, Sasuke,” she whispers into his shoulder. “You’ll find Naruto, I know you will.”

 

“I’ll be back before you know it. The both of us.” The promise rings empty in Sasuke’s ears, but Sakura smiles, the green of her eyes sparkling like jade. He leaves the apartment, sliding his shoes back on, and Sakura softly shuts the door behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twelve hours down the road, Sasuke stops at some strange twenty-four hour diner off the highway. This far out, the landscape becomes darker, blanketed by trees and thick underbrush that make the forest as dark as night in the middle of the day. The diner is the offshoot of a tiny highway community, a gas station, a motel and a truck stop. It’s a pastel blue, trimmed with neon lights and a flashing open sign.

 

At two in the morning, the place is surprisingly busy. A duo of bikers laugh brightly in a booth, a quiet man in a well-tailored business suit sorts through a series of papers on his table. There’s a little breakfast bar that peers into the kitchen, and Sasuke sits on the seat closest to the wall. Two seats over, a lanky blond man, hair pulled back into a long ponytail, sketches into a book.

 

The chipper waitress appears out of the blue, she’s an older woman, hair curled around her face and pulled into a neat bun. Her temples are spotted grey, laugh lines around her eyes. “What can I get for you, dear?”

 

“Coffee,” Sasuke says immediately. He glances back down at the plastic menu on the counter and orders the greasiest thing he can find.

 

“Would you like cream and sugar?”

 

“Just black.” Sasuke sets the menu down, and the waitress nods.

 

The blonde man two seats over snorts, Sasuke stares at him through narrowed eyes.

 

Sasuke opens his phone, opens half a dozen apps that don’t load, before he realizes he gets one measly bar of service. The waitress returns with an off-white mug of coffee, chirps the food should be out soon, and makes a round to the other tables.

 

The coffee is surprisingly Not Shitty™, a vast improvement from the cheap to-go cup he picked up at a fast food joint on the edge of the city eleven hours ago. Sasuke cups his hands around the mug, letting the warmth radiate into his hands.

 

“Tch, what the hell is someone like you doing here?”

 

The blonde guy frowns at him, an elbow leaned up against the counter and his chin pillowed against it. He’s slammed his sketchbook shut, a pencil case leaning up against the most obscene looking milkshake Sasuke has ever seen in his life.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Look at you,” the blonde guy says sharply. “You were about to fucking make out with your coffee cup, you reek of pretentious city boy.”

 

Sasuke almost opens his mouth to retort, but it’s true. Sasuke is the type of person to drop hundreds of dollars on quality coffee, it’s something Sakura brings up to tease him all the time.

 

“What’s someone like you doing here?” Sasuke retorts. The guy looks like he walked out of a late 90’s grunge magazine, just as out of place.  

 

Blondie laughs, plucks the cherry from his milkshake and pops it into his mouth. “I’m an artist, I was born for middle-of-nowhere places like this. What are you doing so far from the city, pretty boy?”

 

Part of Sasuke doesn’t even want to reply, is it too much to ask to be able to drink his coffee in peace? “I’m going to Konoha,” he answers, hoping that’ll be the end of the conversation. The waitress rounds a corner and shoves a plate of steaming food under his face. 

 

“Konoha?” The blonde man hums. “That’s a tiny town, even by my standards.”

 

“You’ve been?”

 

He takes a sip of his milkshake. “Driven through it a couple times while on my way to better places. It’s pretty enough, but no fun to draw, you know?”

 

“Afraid I don’t know.” Sasuke takes a sip of his coffee and the blonde man laughs. “Can you stop talking now?”

 

“You remind me of a friend of mine,” he smiles. “Look just like him too.”

 

Sasuke starts checking out of the conversation, he has no interest in this stranger’s social life. “Really?” He hums, picking at the food on his plate.

 

“Yup, do you happen to know an Itachi Uchiha?”

 

“No,” Sasuke lies, knife clanging uncomfortably loud against his plate. The blonde man opens his sketchbook, flipping past pages. He stops on one, holds the sketchbook out. In charcoal and pencil is an incredibly detailed portrait of his brother.

 

“See? You look just like each other, absolute assholes.”

 

Sasuke rips his eyes away from the drawing. “Is he an artist like you?”

 

“Nah,” Blondie drawls. “He lacks the talent for it, he does photography.”

 

Oh, well that’s new. Itachi was studying business, before he up and disappeared, leaving Sasuke a note and all their inheritance.

 

“He’s not bad, I hate to admit,” Blondie continues. “His eyes are way too fucking sharp, he finds the most ridiculous shots--”

 

“Is he here with you?” Sasuke interrupts. “Would be interesting to meet my doppelganger.”

 

“Oh no, he’s off in South America, if I remember. Photographing some nature-y shit in the Amazons.”

 

Something ugly settles in the pit of Sasuke’s stomach that he hasn’t felt in a long time. He hasn’t spoken to Itachi in _years_ , and it seems his brother is more interested in gallivanting the world instead of checking in on the brother he abandoned.

 

“I should go,” Sasuke says, standing. He tosses a bill on the counter, roughly estimating how much of a tip he needs to leave.

 

“Take care, city boy,” Blondie smirks.

 

Sasuke turns, and asks, sharply, “What the hell is your name?

 

“Deidara,” he grins. “Buy my art on my website.” He takes a sip of his milkshake, lips tilting up in a smirk.

 

Sasuke stalks out of the diner and tries his hardest not to scream in his car. He doesn’t. He turns on his car, plays the radio that broadcasts more static than actual music, and leaves the diner far, far behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

Konoha is a tiny town, right off a tiny stretch of highway that’s just two lanes, surrounded by miles and miles of forests. Through the trees, Sasuke catches glimpses of old railroad tracks, overgrown by grass and rusting over. The town has nothing to its name, no claims to fame, historical attractions, the only thing Sasuke knows about it is that it does have a fairly decent state funded wildlife refuge and rehabilitation center, and that’s only because Naruto would never shut up about it when he was applying there.

 

Sasuke pulls his car off the highway, a little sign says there’s gas one-point-two miles off the road, and that’s it. A gas station is Konoha’s only attraction, the primary reason anyone would bother taking Exit 439 into the town.

 

Konoha has the look of a town on its last legs. The type of town built by train tracks that even the trains have long given up on, where teenagers fresh out of school run off to the city to chase bright vibrant dreams, leaving their parents and hometown to age and decay and fade away. Potholes litter the road, Sasuke winces every time his car hits one. He drives past colorful buildings, faded into pastel colors, all of them boarded up, grime and dirt sketching out the letters and names of what these buildings used to be.

 

The police station is on the main street, and Sasuke drives past it twice before doubling back. The paint is peeling, half the letters missing, it looks more dilapidated than the actual abandoned buildings.

 

Sasuke parks, enters the tiny police station, and pauses. There’s only two desks in the room, and both employees glance up in surprise. One, a male with brown hair, stands. “Ah, you must be Sasuke Uchiha! Chief Mitokado is waiting for you.” His police badge reads _Yamato,_ and he leads Sasuke over to the door, frosted with peeling lettering.

 

Yamato pokes his head in, “Sir, Uchiha is here to see you.”

 

A muffled answer.

 

“You’re good to go in,” Yamato says to Sasuke, stepping back to his desk.

 

Sasuke enters, shutting the door behind him. A very old man rises to meet him, his hair is full, beard as well, all ashy grey. He peers down at Sasuke behind green rimmed glasses and shakes his hand. “Welcome to Konoha,” he says sternly. “Hiruzen spoke very highly of you.”

 

“You know Chief Sarutobi?” Sasuke quirks an eyebrow.

 

Something softens in the old man’s expression. “Know him?” He laughs. “I grew up with him. Hiruzen was born here, was the police chief here before he was transferred to the city.”

 

That’s new. Naruto probably would have known that. “Oh,” Sasuke says cordially. “I had no idea.”

 

“I suppose Hiruzen himself has forgotten where he came from by now.” Bitter. “But that’s not why you’re here is it?”

 

Sasuke shakes his head, no, it’s not.

 

“You know Mr. Uzumaki?”

 

“I have since high school,” Sasuke replies.

 

Mitokado tugs out a manila file. “This is all we have, it’s not much, to be frank with you.” He slides it over the desk and Sasuke opens it eagerly. There’s the missing person’s report, made by one Iruka Umino, an all-clear notice that Naruto hasn’t been spotted on any security cameras since then. His poster is there as well, freshly printed, Sakura must have emailed the picture over.

 

“Uzumaki’s been in town for almost a year now, he’s quite the…interesting lad.” Sasuke glances up sharply. “So, unfortunately, we don’t know much about him. Your insight would be valued on an apartment sweep, see if you can pick up anything that we may have missed.” A pause. “I would also like you to speak to Iruka Umino at the Wildlife Center across town first though, he was the last person to see Uzumaki.” 

 

Sasuke nods, tucking the file under his arm. “Anything else, sir?”

 

“No, you’re excused.”

 

He leaves the tiny office behind him, nodding at Yamato and the other police officer as he leaves. His GPS says the Wildlife Center is a ten-minute drive away, on the edge of town where the forest begins.

 

The Konoha Wildlife Center for Rehabilitation and Conservation is a little one story building, tin roofed and peeling siding. Pawprint decals are stuck in the windows, the sign a little crooked. The building is open from 7am to 6pm, and Sasuke pulls open one of the doors and enters.

 

A bell chimes as he enters, the lobby is entirely empty, ripped upholstered chairs and a front desk greet him instead of a person. There’s a little pinboard on the wall, sweet photos of the volunteer staff and the animals. Sasuke realizes that most of it is Naruto, with baby foxes cradled in his arms, birds alighted on his shoulders, grinning next to a massive toad that looks warty, and unimpressed in his arms. One in particular is especially eye catching: one of him and a dark-haired man with a scar over his nose, a popsicle melting in his hand, leaving streaks of red, sticky and bright, all over his knuckles, lips stained cherry red, blue eyes dancing.

 

Naruto looks happy.

 

“Hi!” A voice calls. “Sorry to keep you waiting!” The dark-haired man pokes his head out from a side room, a baby doe in his arms. He’s the man from the pictures, with the strange, jagged scar that runs over the bridge of his nose. His hair is tied back in a neat ponytail. Sasuke suddenly feels overdressed for the small town, glancing at the ripped jeans, and the yellow stain on the other’s white shirt that looks suspiciously like animal urine. Sasuke’s long black coat suddenly feels ostentatious.

 

“Hello,” Sasuke greets. “Are you Iruka Umino?”

 

The man smiles. “Yes! I run the facility here.”

 

“My name is Sasuke Uchiha, I’m a friend of – “

 

“Yes! Naruto talks about you all the time!” Iruka shakes his hand, maneuvering the sleeping deer to rest in his other arm.

 

Sasuke, taken aback by the man’s exuberant attitude, coughs. “You were the one who reported him as missing, yes?”

 

“Yes,” Iruka nods, solemn. The baby deer mewls in his arms. “Sorry, I need to get this kid back to where he should be, follow me.”

 

Iruka darts into the back of the facility, Sasuke at his heels. There are animals _everywhere._ A bird with a wing in a cast chirps a top a computer, a bat hangs sleeping from an exposed pipe. “Sorry,” Iruka says, setting the fawn on a metal table. “Poor thing broke her leg; her mother ran off. It needs to be set; the mother still hangs around so there’s a chance she’ll take her baby back if we do this right.”

 

Sasuke nods, glancing around the room. There are little signs of Naruto all over the room, his messy handwriting is scrawled over a whiteboard, listing which animals need which medicine, besides that is a messy doodle of a frog in green marker. A familiar orange jacket is strewn over a chair. Sasuke pads over, running his fingers over the fabric, and stops.

 

“What’s that?”

 

A fox that does not look like it needs refuge or rehabilitation sleeps in the chair. “Oh, that’s Nine Tails,” Iruka answers, mouth full of taping bandages.

 

“Nine Tails?”

 

“Naruto named him,” Iruka explains. “Said it was some Pokémon thing.”

 

That does sound like Naruto, if Sasuke was being honest. An orange Nintendo DS sits on a desk. “He left a lot of his stuff here.”

 

Iruka hums. “I think it’s because he was expecting to _come back_ the next morning. He even left food in the fridge—oh, there you go.” He smiles, finishing the deer’s bandaging. “When I reported him, they police said it could just be that he ran off, but I don’t think he would have left so many of his things behind if he did.”

 

“You were the person who saw him last?”

 

“As far as I know, we close at six, but we never really get out of here until eleven. He said goodnight and said he’d be back in the morning, but he never came. No one answered at his apartment, and I reported it to the Chief the next day.”

 

Sasuke taps his fingers against the desk, the fox on the chair yawns and yips in its sleep. “Does he have any reasons to go out of town?”

 

“Oh yes,” Iruka answers. “He visits a friend out of town every two weeks for the weekend. Think his name is Jiraiya. Never met the guy, but Naruto drives out to check on him, he’s an older man, I think.”

 

Jiraiya. Sasuke’s never heard the name before. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

 

“Everything else I know should already be on file,” Iruka shrugs. “Do you need directions to his apartment?”

 

Sasuke nods, Iruka grabs a spare piece of paper and scribbles on it. “Head back onto main street and follow it all the way to the library. Naruto’s apartment is across the street, number 205.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“It’s no problem,” Iruka smiles. “He’s a sweet kid, I hope you find him safe and sound.”

 

Sasuke makes his way back to the front door, but stops, question heavy on his tongue. “Was Naruto doing okay here?”

 

“He was amazing,” Iruka says, pride glowing in his eyes. “Best employee I’ve ever had, he has this way with the foxes. Can’t explain it really, but I needed the help.” A dark look. “Someone’s been illegally shooting the foxes in the area.”

 

“Anyways,” he continues. “He talks about Sakura and you all the time, I probably know more stories about you than you know about. I care about Naruto, I’m glad he has friends like you.”

 

Sasuke blinks. “Thank you,” he says softly. “We haven’t heard from him a while. I should get going.”

 

Iruka walks him back to the front and waves from the doors as Sasuke exits the parking lot. He arrives at Naruto’s apartment complex in ten minutes, the benefit of small, dead, towns like this, is that there’s hardly any traffic, or red lights to deal with. 

 

Naruto’s apartment building is the cheaper kind that has all the doors on the outside, where anyone from the street can walk up and rap on the door. Otherwise, it’s a quaint building, quiet and charming. Each resident has painted on their doors, leaving name placards and personal decorations. The door next to Naruto’s is painted lavender, the name _Hinata_ written in white script. The flowers and plants from her windowsill and railings spill over onto Naruto’s side, blooming lilies complimenting the bright red and orange of his front door.

 

The Konoha Police station gave him the spare key to the building, and Sasuke fiddles with the key, tracing his fingers over it, before unlocking the door to Naruto’s home.

 

He enters.


	3. An Uninhabited Home

Naruto’s apartment is dark. Blinds closed, curtains shrouded over them, dust clings to the fabric in a thick layer, as if they haven’t been opened for some time. It’s unlike Naruto, Sasuke thinks, to not have sunshine and bright light spill into his home. The walls are off white, a dirty color that a renting agreement won’t let you paint over. Nevertheless, Naruto must have tried his best to add color to his life. There’s a series of bright posters pinned to the wall, an orange rug over the floor, a hint of a blue bedspread peeks out from a doorframe that must lead to a bedroom.

 

Sasuke shuts the door behind him.

 

It’s a small floorplan. A little kitchenette crammed in the corner, a well-worn loveseat next to a dusty desk. It’s almost deceptively clean, bare, but Sasuke saw the Wildlife Sanctuary, Naruto leaves his mess there, rather than this apartment. Sasuke flips the light switch. It stays dark. A landlord must have delightfully cut the power to this apartment, relishing a lower electricity cost, mourning a fat utility bill. Sasuke eyes the dusty curtains that block out the sunlight, wrenches them open with a pained expression. Dust flies into the air, blocking his nose, choking his throat. Sasuke coughs, once, twice, then sneezes. At least the room is lit now, he’s never been able to see well in the dark.

 

A pair of familiar shoes rest by the door, old ones, beat up from years of use. Naruto wore them in high school, still owns them apparently. Sasuke slides his shoes, new, clean, next to them. Little artifacts of Naruto’s existence litter the front room. Dishes in the sink, a used ramen cup in the trash, a single stray orange sock tangled up in a blanket on the couch.

 

Sasuke wanders over, skimming his hands across any surface, his fingers come up caked in dust. He stops by the desk. There’s a long black charging cable, familiar too, that goes to a laptop that’s not there. Naruto’s had the same laptop since high school, an old, stuttering thing that whines and whirs if you open more than three tabs. It has a loud orange case, dented and scratched.

 

And it’s not _here_.

 

It wasn’t at the animal sanctuary, Sasuke would have noticed it otherwise. He has a talent for picking up on anything Naruto related, it’s why he’s here now. The laptop is not here, and not at work, which means Naruto must have taken it with him, wherever he went. The charging cord was left behind, pulled taut and fallen in the way that suggests that it had been wrenched from a laptop quickly, violently. Sasuke rolls the tip of the cord between his fingers, looks at the rest of the desk.

 

A stack of spiral-bound journals brings a soft smile to Sasuke’s face. They are a familiar sight, a ridiculous number of little notebooks with bright designs, cute cartoon characters, a pattern Naruto must have admired. The blonde had been dedicated—devoted to the idea of keeping a journal. _It’s cool Sasuke,_ he had said once. _You can go back and read about all the little things you did that you forgot! Like a joke you heard, or something that made you laugh._

 

For all Naruto’s best efforts, he never kept a journal longer than a week. Life distracted him, school or work. Never could figure out how to put the words down the way he wanted. Sasuke takes the nearest one, a bright blue, idly skims his thumb across the side, lifting the pages up and sending them fluttering down against his finger. Each page is covered in ink, different colored pens, markers, faint pencil, little sparks of color against a glimpse of a page.

 

Startled, Sasuke flips the notebook open. Every single page is full of Naruto’s rough handwriting, curling across the lines, each entry dated, day of the month, day of the week. Some entries even have a time, _August 12, Tuesday, that strange hour in-between 12am and 1am. August 14 th, Thursday,  August, September, October—_

 

Sasuke stops, flips back to the beginning.  This one goes back to the end of April, early May. The first few pages talk about moving in, meeting the mayor, his neighbor—the girl with the lavender painted door who brought him a housewarming plant and a box of cookies. The entire thing page is written in bright ink, switching from blue to orange to green. Little polaroid pictures are taped in the corners, a ramen bowl, a fox, an old picture of Sasuke and Sakura is glued to the back of a page.

 

_May 3 rd , Hinata showed me where the ramen stand in town is today! Ayame and Teuchi are really nice, and I think even Sakura would like the food here! _

_May 7 th, We found a pair of baby raccoons today! Their mom was…roadkill, unfortunately. Iruka says the state technically says it’s illegal to bring in raccoons to the sanctuary because of some stupid pest laws or whatever, but they would have died on their own. As long as no one finds out, we should be fine. I named the first one—_

The rest of the pages go on like this, a lilting, absentminded descriptions of Naruto’s day, little moments he decided to write down and remember. Sasuke recalls a few, a picture of infant raccoons in a blanket, a selfie with a frog on his head, a picture of ramen with a horrific filter. Little snapshots of his life captured and sent in streams of text messages that one day just stopped.

 

Sasuke shuts the blue notebook, it ends in late May. There’s three more left; the green one is blank, as if Naruto had planned to start writing in it but never got the chance to. The bright red one is dated through June and July, Sasuke looks it over. Nothing of importance, everything was normal still, Naruto called on his birthday. It was Sakura and him, crammed into Sasuke’s couch, Naruto on speaker as they ate crappy takeout and rambled about whatever crossed their minds. They had been so loud Anko pounded on his door at one in the morning and yelled for them to shut up.

 

The last notebook is a purple one. More beat up than the others, the bottom tip of the spiral binding is half undone, like the end of a school year, when all your notebooks—beaten, bent, dirty—started to come undone at the seams. Inside the cover, Naruto’s handwriting scrawls in a corner, _September -- ?_

 

Sasuke opens the notebook, looking for a date closer to December. _September 3 rd, 7th, 15th, 29th, _the dates space farther and farther apart. _October 10 th, Was supposed to call Sasuke and Sakura, forgot. October 31st, November. _Sasuke flips the page labeled November 3rd and blinks at the blank back of the notebook.

 

Half of the pages have been torn out. Serrated edges haphazardly bound in wire, crooked and wrenched from their binding. There’s nothing past November 2nd. With a resigned breath, Sasuke flips back to the beginning, and skims through the dozen or so pages the notebook contains.

 

_September 15 th, -- Mayor came in to “inspect” the rehab center today. He’s such a jerk I can’t believe it. It’s like he thinks the entire program is a “waste of town funding” – _

_October 1 st, -- ran into Hinata’s weird ass cousin at the store today. Like, I get that you’re a jerk and you “don’t approve of me” but like, you can’t kick me out of the store because I sneezed really loud okay? He’s not even a real manager, but Hinata still likes him for some reason so I have to be nice –  _

_Anyways, there was this old dude asking for someone to help bring him his groceries when it finally starts to snow here? He lives out in the woods or something out of town. I think his name was Jiraiya--?_

Jiraiya.

 

Sasuke frowns

 

\-- _I mean, he didn’t have loads of volunteers, so it’s the nice thing to do right? Even though he like chucked a cereal box at my head when he saw me. Said I looked like someone he used to know, it still hurt though. Old guy has good aim._

Skimming, Sasuke glances for any other mentions of the name Jiraiya in the handful of pages he has left.

 

_October 17 th—I’m not supposed to tell anyone about Jiraiya or where he lives, but I told Iruka. The old man’s paranoid but I don’t want Iruka to worry about me when I drive out there. Didn’t tell him the address, just what I’m doing, so I guess I held up half of my promise. _

Sasuke flips to the last entry in the notebook.

 

_November 3 rd, None of this makes sense. _

 

A wry laugh. Naruto describes Sasuke’s situation perfectly. He snaps the threadbare notebook shut, alone with his thoughts in the unsettling stillness of Naruto’s apartment. It’s the first time he’s ever set foot in the place, and it already feels so wrong, a sharp deviance from what he would have expected it to be like: bright, inviting, loud. Most of all, Naruto would have been here.

 

But he isn’t, and Sasuke’s only lead is a name.

 

_Who is Jiraiya?_

He needs to find out.

 

Sasuke rises, snatches the notebook from the desk, his breathing the only sound. Eyes sweeping the room, flickering over little messes, echoes of Naruto’s existence here, he decides that it is time to leave. There is nothing left to help him here. Sasuke leaves everything the way Naruto left it, resists the urge to fold the blanket on the couch, and heads towards the door.

 

Sasuke casts a final look at the apartment, wrenches the door open, and flinches so violently the notebook falls out of his hands.

 

A girl stands in the doorway, hand raised as if she was about to knock on the door. Her pale eyes are wide, mouth opened in shock as she jumps backwards, a terrified little squeak pushing out of her throat. She’s a small person, shy, washed of color, she wears a massive hoodie that drowns her frame in lilac fabric.

 

A beat. Sasuke and the girl lock eyes, petrified.

 

“O-oh my goodness! I’m _so_ sorry!” The moment crumbles. Her voice is breathy and quiet, earnest. “I saw the curtains were open and I thought, that maybe Naruto was back—!”

 

“You know Naruto?”

 

The girl steps back, the tips of her ears and the apples of her cheeks flush a crimson red. “I-I’m his neighbor.” Ah, Hinata. The color of her face suggests she wants to be more than _just_ Naruto’s neighbor, Sasuke’s eyes narrow—he already doesn’t like her, and she flushes even darker. “W-what were you doing in his apartment?”

 

“I’m a detective. Part of the investigation,” he answers bluntly. “Do you know anyone called Jiraiya?”

 

“Jiraiya? I-I’ve never heard of anyone with that name.”

 

He nods, pulls Naruto’s front door closed behind him, and side steps Hinata. Her eyes—Sasuke can’t find an adequate word for the color—widen in surprise, and she whirls around to watch him. “H-have you found anything?” She calls over the railing, dark hair framing her face as she peers down at him.

 

Sasuke pauses halfway down the stairs, hand fishing for his keys, and cranes his head up at her. “If I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”

 

Hinata wilts, Sasuke continues on his way. As he gets in his car and drives off, he can still feel her strange colorless eyes boring into him.

 

Konoha is small, it shouldn’t be hard to find someone who recognizes Jiraiya’s name. Sasuke parks in the tiny, crack ridden parking lot of a local restaurant, the type where everyone in a small town congregates as the day draws to a close. The parking lot is full of old, beat up cars, paint peels off the walls, music and laughter echoes from inside. Sasuke enters, conversations quiet and mute as he stands stiffly by the hostess podium, locals gossip in whispering hush about the newest outsider. A stranger.

 

A bright-eyed waitress pops into view. Her brown hair is twisted up into two tight buns. She grins widely, her crooked nametag reads Tenten. “Hiya,” she chirps. Something manic gleams in her eye, in the strained corners of her smile, the sign of a stressed employee. “Just one today?”

Sasuke nods; she turns and grabs a grease spotted menu and leads him to a booth by a window. The seats are white, with a red long red stripe at either end, and it squeaks and rocks as Sasuke slides into it. “How are you, sir?”

 

“Fine,” Sasuke replies. Tenten sets the menu in front of him. She tugs a notepad out of a pocket in her fading apron. “Are you new in town?” She asks conversationally. “I’ve never seen you before, and I’ve practically met everyone in this town three times over by now.”

 

“I’m just…visiting,” Sasuke replies.

 

Tenten grins, far more genuine this time, eager to speak with someone brand new. “How long are you staying?” She asks. “If you have any questions about anyone or anything, you can ask away!”

 

“Do you know anyone named Jiraiya?”

 

Tenten’s grin freezes in place, brown eyes wide and flickering over to a group of men sitting across the room. “C-can I get you anything to drink?”

 

“I—do you know anything about—?” Tenten shakes her head slowly, imperceptibly. “Fine,” Sasuke relents. “I’ll have a coffee, thanks.”

 

He waits, Tenten disappears behind a counter and into a kitchen. She does not come back out. Instead, an older woman, dark black hair, darker eyes comes out with a coffee pot in her hand and a mug in the other. Her name tag reads _Shizune,_ glossy and black, one of those fancy magnet ones.  

 

She sets the mug down, tilts the coffee pot in her hand. Steam rises up in a rich smelling cloud that curls in the air above Sasuke’s face. “Are you ready to order?” Her voice is clipped, short, Sasuke opens his mouth but she barrels right over him. “Oh, you have a question on the menu?” She speaks loudly, and leans in over his shoulder, hair tickling the nape of his neck.

 

“Not now,” Shizune whispers. “We’re not supposed to talk about Jiraiya here.” She smells faintly of coffee and a floral perfume, and then she rockets back. “Of course, I can get you that,” voice sweet. “It’ll be out in a jiffy.” And then she turns, heels clicking on the linoleum, and disappears into the kitchen.

 

Sasuke settles, hands wrapping around the coffee mug. The place is quiet now, people quietly eating or slowly filtering out of the building. Even the group of old men in the corner have gone quiet, whispering. Sasuke takes a sip of his coffee, doesn’t even wince as it scalds down his throat, and waits.

 

A hand settles on his shoulder. He, dignifiedly, spits a mouthful of coffee back into the cup out of surprise.

 

“My apologies, didn’t mean to startle you.”

 

Sasuke glances up, a wizened old man stares down at him. He leans heavily on a cane, one half of his body wrapped in thick bandaging. His face is creased, ancient, dotted with age spots and half of it is wrapped in thick gauze, one eye peering out from the thick material. The skin around it is discolored, like he had been brutally burned on one side of his body. He smiles, for all his efforts it does not come off as friendly.

 

“I’m Danzō Shimura,” the old man continues. “The mayor.”

 

Sasuke bows his head, dutifully shakes the man’s hand when it is offered to him. The mayor slides into the opposite side of the booth, bones creaking and whining. “You must be Sasuke Uchiha.”

 

“That easy to figure out?”

 

Danzō snorts and it sounds as if his lungs collapsed. “Of course,” he says, almost bitterly. “Konoha rarely has anyone new pass through our small town.”

 

“It’s quite quaint, very lovely.” A lie.

 

“You should have seen her in her heyday.”

 

Sasuke glances down at the reflection in his coffee as silence passes between them. Mayor Shimura watches him with dark eyes, unreadable. Coughs once, then a dozen more. “Have you started your investigation?”

 

“Yes,” Sasuke answers.

 

“Find anything?”

 

 _Jiraiya,_ he wants to say, but then he remembers Shizune’s whispered warning, catches her blood-drained face peering at the mayor from the corner of his eye. “No,” he lies cordially.

“Naruto is so messy it’s hard to make sense of anything.”

 

“Ah, the Uzumaki kid is quite a…character,” Danzō says tightly. Sasuke’s eyes narrow at his tone.  “I’m sure the two of you were close friends.”

 

“You could say that.”

 

“If you have any questions for me about anything, feel free to visit my office at the town hall.”

 

He tries to stand, cane shaking in his fingers, and Sasuke rises, helps the man to his feet. “I will, sir. It was nice to meet you.”

 

“You Uchiha’s,” he whispers under his breath, so quiet Sasuke barely catches it. “Always so polite.”

 

He returns to his table, back to his group of men, and Sasuke falls back into the squeaking booth and _waits_.

 

Eventually, Shizune returns. Wordlessly, she slides a plate of pancakes over to him. Her hands are shaking. “Breakfast?” Sasuke asks.

 

“You’ll like it,” she says, lips pursed in a tight line. “Tenten gets off at eight, talk to her.”

 

This entire diner seems wrong, strained, falling apart at the seams, but Sasuke waits. Waits, waits, waits. Shizune’s pancake tastes more like cake, too sweet, the cream cloys in his mouth, teeth aching. Sasuke reluctantly agrees that it isn’t half bad.

 

He’s known Shizune for less than an hour and she already is annoyingly correct in everything she says. Sakura is the same way, everything she says is like an eerie premonition that always comes true. _“Sasuke, you’ll get sick if you don’t wear a jacket today,”_ and, in the end he did come down with a horrible flu.  

 

The clock above the counter ticks on and on. _7:30._ Sasuke eats half of the pancake, drinks the rest of the coffee, which has gone lukewarm. No one comes to refill it. The diner slowly empties, Danzō is one of the last to leave, wishing farewells, shaking hands, and the group of men file out after him.

 

Finally, when the diner has slowly emptied, apart from Sasuke and a woman reading in another booth, Tenten reappears from the kitchen. Her apron is slung over an arm, hair twisted up in braids now, she doesn’t spare him a single glance, just clocks out, says goodbye to a cook and leaves.

 

Sasuke rises, throws a wad of money on the table, and goes after her.  It’s too warm to snow here, but winter means shorter days, no matter where you are. The parking lot is dark, lit by a flickering street lamp that casts everything in a washed out yellow glow. Tenten leans up against the side wall of the building, phone in her hand. She clicks it locked as Sasuke approaches, glancing up at him with shaded eyes.

 

“You were stupid,” she says. “Asking about Jiraiya in public like that.”

 

“So you know him?”

 

Tenten snorts. “Everyone knows about Jiraiya. Hard to miss some old dude who lives up in the woods. He’s like a legend.”

 

“Then what’s the problem?” Sasuke asks.

 

“Mayor Shimura doesn’t like it when anyone mentions him, he starts acting really…weird.”

 

“Weird?”

 

“They used to work together,” Tenten explains, hushed. “Some research thing that ended in an accident—it’s why Mayor Shimura wears all those bandages. They had a falling out, it’s why Jiraiya doesn’t live in town.”

 

Sasuke hums. “Do you know where I can find him?”

 

“No,” she says. “But Shizune does, she gave me directions for you. They’re old family friends.” Tenten reaches down, tugs a slip of paper out of her back pocket. “Don’t go tonight, it’s pitch black on the mountain, you won’t be able to see where you’re going.”

 

“Thank you,” Sasuke says, genuine, he slides the paper into the pocket of his coat.

 

“Don’t mention it. Thank Shizune if you ever come back around here again. There’s a motel up two blocks over,” Tenten says. “You should stay there for the night.”

 

He nods, takes a few steps back. “Anything else?”

 

“Nope,” she pops the p sound. “I gotta head home.”

 

“You’re walking? Is that safe?”

 

She laughs, sound echoing through the empty space. “I’m safe as could be. People would look for me if anything happened.” She pushes off the wall, starts walking towards the sidewalk, but she turns. “Shizune wanted me to say,” voice somber. “If you hear anything about a woman named Tsunade, let her know, please.”

 

Sasuke nods, and she disappears into the night.

 

He gets into his car, starts the ignition, and drives. Somehow, Tenten is nowhere to be seen, Sasuke can’t catch any glimpse of her and he drives the two blocks over to the local motel. _Vacancies,_ the neon sign screams, blinking an array of bright colors.

 

The man inside is sleeping at the front desk when he enters. Sasuke presses the little bell and watches, stoic and quiet, as the man jerks awake and screeches, falling half out of his chair.

 

“I need a room,” Sasuke says curtly.

 

“Name?”

 

“Sasuke Uchiha.”

 

The man pauses. “Oh, Yamato told me to expect you, the police department already paid for a room for you.” He bends down to fish out a numbered pair of keys from a drawer. “Out of curiosity, any relation to Itachi Uchiha?”

 

That _name_ again.

 

“No,” Sasuke lies. “Not that I know of.”

 

“Oh okay, Itachi swings by Konoha twice a year so I was curious.”

 

His blood runs like ice, ears ringing, Sasuke wordlessly takes the keys from the man’s hand and leaves. He counts the doors, finds Room 18B and enters.

 

The room is average for a motel, creaky bed, discolored carpet, Sasuke wonders if Itachi’s ever stayed in this exact same room.

 

He locks the door.

 

Sasuke goes to sleep.


	4. the empty woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains warnings for graphic descriptions of a corpse in the first half of the chapter.

When Sasuke wakes, the room is still dark. The streetlight outside the door bleeds through the cracks in the blinds and casts a dim yellow glow over the room. He reaches for his phone, flinching as the skin of his arm meets the chilled air. The screen lights up at his touch, flashing a set of numbers, _6:25._ Still a little early for the late autumn sun to begin to rise, but Sasuke tugs himself out of bed nonetheless. He twitches as his feet meet the rough carpet.

 

Quickly pulling on a pair of socks, Sasuke dresses in quick silence. The thin scrap of paper that Tenten gave him feels like a heavy weight in his pocket.

 

Going by protocol, Sasuke should alert the local police that he wants to search Jiraiya’s home. But something about the town—the way Mayor Shimura spat out Naruto’s name, makes him stop—Sasuke would rather get there first and see for himself. 

 

As Sasuke leaves, there’s someone new at the front desk. A woman this time, busying herself by brewing a batch of cheap off-brand coffee that Sasuke knows will taste terrible. She grins as he passes by, too sharp and angular, “Did you enjoy your stay?”

 

“It was acceptable,” Sasuke replies, not bothering to inform her that he’ll likely be back tonight. There’s something in her eyes that puts him off. When he pulls out of the parking lot, she’s hovering by the window, still watching him.

 

Konoha in the early morning is quiet, shrouded in mist. The sun is only just starting to peek up over the tree line, tinging the mist subdued pinks and oranges. Sasuke’s car is the only one on the street, rolling quietly down Konoha’s Main Street. The lights to the diner flicker on, and Sasuke catches glimpse of Shizune and another sleepy looking cook go about opening for the day.

 

Sasuke gets caught at the last red light at the town’s borders. A man, bundled in a thick coat, waits idly for the crosswalk sign to turn. Sasuke watches him absentmindedly, waiting for the light. The crosswalk signal blinks white, but the man doesn’t cross. He stands there and meets Sasuke’s gaze. The sun breaks up over the trees, casting the entire town in its golden light. The light refracts off the man’s wire-rimmed glasses, burning into Sasuke’s eyes.

 

The stoplight turns green, Sasuke’s accelerates faster than he ought to and tears away from the town.

 

In the rearview mirror, the man stands, still and unmoving, watching Sasuke go.

 

 

 

 

Konoha is surrounded by miles upon miles of thick, towering forests and mountains. It’s what brought Naruto here in the first place—the miles of protected forest. There’s no better location for a wildlife sanctuary. Naruto should have had the time of his life here.

 

Sasuke wonders what went wrong.

 

Jiraiya’s home is indeed halfway up a mountain. Sasuke’s car struggles the higher he goes. The trees get thicker here, towering above him. They grow so close together that their canopy blocks out most of the sun, Sasuke drives with his headlights on. The woods feel old—untouched, other than the rough, one lane road, has anyone ever set foot beyond the tree line? It’s so rare to find a place absolutely untouched by humanity, a wild place. It feels alive.

 

Hidden behind dense forest brush, Sasuke almost drives past a small turn-off—the kind you never see unless you know what you’re looking for. You could barely even call this a road—just an impression of where someone had driven before and worn the grass down to dirt.

 

The trail leads up a little further, Sasuke’s car struggles up the final incline, and he breathes a sigh of relief as the trees start to thin and the road levels flat. Jiraiya’s home slowly pulls into view.

 

The house in the woods is quiet. A gaping hole in the woods where the trees seem afraid to grow too close. A familiar car, Naruto’s old beat up one, is haphazardly parked on a gravel driveway behind a dirty, faded truck. Crooked, like he had arrived in a hurry and hopped out of the car. Sasuke pulls up behind it slowly, wincing slightly as his tires spin on loose gravel.

 

The front door to the house is kicked open, half broken off its hinges, and at the sight of it something sinks in Sasuke’s chest. He doubts anybody is still here. Still, Sasuke twists the ignition off, stepping out of his car.

 

The air smells heavy, weighed down with the smell of rain, dirt, and something darker, sweet, like rotting wood. It gets stronger, fouler, as Sasuke approaches the door. A _KEEP AWAY, PRIVATE PROPERTY_ sign is nailed to the side of the house. Like the rest of the place, it’s muted, dirt stained, sun bleached, nature encroaching in.

 

Sasuke pauses in front of the gaping wound that is the front door. The house is dark, either the power is off or the generator is damaged, as the porch light flickers intermittedly. Hand hovering at his pistol, Sasuke enters. The door leads into a long hallway. There’s a staircase to Sasuke’s left, leading up to the second floor, and to his right is an archway leading into what Sasuke would assume to be a living room. Books and pictures litter the floor, seemingly ripped down from the tall bookcases that line most of the hallway wall, as if someone was looking for something.

 

The heavy stench is stronger indoors. Sasuke, in a fit of morbid curiosity, follows it. It grows in intensity, and Sasuke veers right into the living room. It’s more of an office than anything else, more toppled bookshelves, files strewn about, a massive desk with a computer that—

 

 

There’s someone sitting in the chair. The computer screen flickers on and off, sucking power from the already damaged grid. Sasuke can see their shadow in the flashing bright light, a pair of legs, a mop of wild white hair.

 

Sasuke creeps up behind them, pistol in hand, and spins the chair around roughly. He stops.

 

A maggot flails in the bullet hole in the man’s forehead. The blood caking most of his white hair and face is dark, almost black with age. It gathered in the creases of his face, wrinkles emphasized by the dried blood. His black eyes, almost as dark as the blood, gaze emptily back at him. As the chair spins, the corpse shifts. A new wave of rot and waste release into the air, the reek of decomposition. The man’s head lists forward, the maggot lands on his lap with a glob of tissue.  Sasuke gags at the stench, a fly buzzes past his ear.

 

Every detective goes through standard training in regard to corpses. It’s a week-long program, six hours a day at the precinct’s morgue. Clean, pristine, methodical. Sasuke’s never seen a corpse like this—bloody, sagging and bloated with pests and rotting viscera. The greenish hue to his pale skin implies that the man has been dead for at least a week—if not longer, quietly decomposing with none the wiser.

 

_Is this Jiraiya?_

It must be. Who else could it be.

 

But where does that leave Naruto?

 

The computer he sits in front of is shattered, whenever the power flickers back on, the cracked screen lights up and flashes blue, white, a glitched matrix. Its tower is similarly destroyed. Sasuke kneels down and peers into the gaping hole in the side, it’s been gutted, most of the components are absent.

 

As he stands, his head passes up next to Jiraiya’s splayed knees, hair brushing up against the fabric of the man’s blood-soaked sweatpants. One of the corpse’s hands rests on his thigh, knuckles clenched in a death-grip around something. Sasuke pauses on his way up, wincing as he touches chilled, soft, dead skin, and pries a sleek, black external drive out of Jiraiya’s hands.

 

It’s weighty, for its size. Sasuke rolls it in his palm and drops it in his coat pocket. There’s no working computer for him to plug it into anyways.

 

On the path leading up the staircase, there’s a photo that catches Sasuke’s attention. It’s ripped in half, poking out of the pages of a fallen book. A duo in lab coats, a young woman with sandy blonde hair pulled into pigtails grins next to a younger ghost of Jiraiya. The rough rip down the picture runs on the left side of the woman. A single pale hand is all that remains of the figure that was ripped out from the photograph. Sasuke bends down, tugging it out and flips it over.

 

  1. _Me, Tsunade and Oro—_



 

The rip cuts the remaining text in half. Lost to time. But Tsunade rings a bell—the woman Shizune asked about.

 

He makes his way up the rest of the stairs. The air seems colder on the smaller, second floor. There’s a nondescript bathroom, surprisingly clean, that Sasuke doesn’t bother to go into. The only other room on this floor is a bedroom of moderate size. Hanging off its hinges, the door to the room had been forced open too.

 

The bedroom is relatively bare, devoid of any personal touches. Nothing interesting apart from the gaping, shattered window. Shards of glass litter the carpet and part of the mattress and caught on the remains of the window frame is a shred of fabric in a very familiar orange color. It shifts limply in the breeze like a forlorn flag. A spot of color against the blank room and the dark forest.

 

It’s Naruto’s jacket—a different one from the one left at the Wildlife Center. Newer, traded in the bright blue accents for black. Sasuke’s never seen it in person, but only through the rare, smattering of pictures Naruto had sent. The strip on the window is from the shoulders, mostly black with a hint of burnt orange, caught from when Naruto—

 

_~~Was pushed?~~_ Or jumped.

 

Sasuke scrambles across the room, glass cracking beneath his shoes. The gaping window is set above the bed, Sasuke has to clamber atop the mattress. It’s old, buckling under his weight, foot sinking aged foam and creaking springs. Taking the fabric in his hands, Sasuke peers out of the broken window. Behind the house is a flat stretch of brush and tall grass that meet the edge of the forest. Nothing indicates where Naruto might have gone after plunging twenty feet to the ground.

 

He pulls back from the window, stepping to the side to turn and avoid a particularly sharp looking piece of glass, and Sasuke’s foot meets something flat and hard beneath the tangled bedsheets. Kicking them aside, a laptop peeks out, with a screaming orange case adorned with scratched, faded stickers.

Naruto must have hidden it here before he—

 

_Jumped? Disappeared? ~~Died~~?  _

Climbing off the bed, Sasuke flips the laptop open. He presses down on the power button for an unbearably long time, waiting for the ancient thing to start up and wheeze as it brings itself to life. The stuttering whirring of the fan nearly shakes the laptop, and it boots up to an empty screen.

 

Sasuke blinks once at the unusual sight. No funky wallpapers, no cluttered desktop, everything is clean, neat, blank. The files folder is equally blank, no signs of the photographs, old school assignments, games that Naruto had coveted through his high school life. All erased. Missing. A blank receptacle.

 

Deep in his pocket, the sleek little external USB drive feels weighty. Sasuke fishes it out, hands brushing against his keys and the smooth face of the old photograph. It doesn’t fit the first try, Sasuke grudgingly flips it over, slots it back in with no avail. He flips it back again, and it slides in perfectly.

 

The laptop boots it up slowly, files loading in one by one in the folder. Mostly videos, Sasuke realizes, . _avi_ files organized in no particular method, and there’s a colossal amount—the sidebar gets smaller and smaller as more load in. Sasuke tabs over to the recently accessed files, where a smaller, more manageable number of files load in. The first one blinks up at him, _0503_1993_experiment.avi_.

 

Experiments? Sasuke clicks on it with a morbid curiosity, an almost eagerness to see what the file will entail. The media player boots up slowly, lagging. The window flashes white and freezes, trying to load in the file as slowly as possible, almost a taunt.

 

When Sasuke leans back, resigned to his fate of waiting, the program resumes, the file loaded in successfully.

 

He presses play.


	5. subject experimentation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains graphic descriptions of torture, gore, and corpses.

The video stutters like a heartbeat; grainy and dusty in the way old security footage did at the station.  A woman with the most vibrant red hair Sasuke has ever seen pants in a chair, voice hoarse and creaking from screaming. Her lips are stained the color of her hair, blood smeared around the spot where she had bitten through her lip. A doctor steps into view, fiddles with the straps around her legs and wrists, and idly starts flipping through papers on a clipboard. His circle rimmed glasses glare in the fluorescent lighting, glinting up at the camera.

 

_“Please state your assigned patient number for the record.”_

“ _I have a name,”_ the woman spits. Her voice is stronger than Sasuke expected; loud and clear, it rings around the room and even the doctor, poised and immaculate, straightens a bit at her tone. “ _I’m not a number, my name—_ “

 

“ _State your patient number for the record,”_ the doctor interrupts. He taps a pen idly against his clipboard. His voice is saccharine, cloying in his casual tone. “ _It goes faster if you cooperate, you know.”_

“ _My **name** is Mito Uzumaki,” _she bites. The doctor sighs, tuts softly. Sasuke’s heart freezes in his chest. Uzumaki?

 

“ _Really now, this won’t do.”_ Something dark curls in the sweet lilt of his voice. “ _If it would help, I have no qualms about turning on the electricity to your chair again. As counterproductive as that would be.”_

In the grainy film, his hand delicately flicks a switch. Mito Uzumaki jerks violently against the chair and then stops, thumping back in exhaustion as the switch is flipped off. There’s a moment of respite, a smirk curls across the doctor’s face. When Mito Uzumaki’s bright eyes flutter closed in relief, he flips the switch back on abruptly. On and off. On and off, on and off. Mito Uzumaki seizes on the table.

 

“ _Doctor Yakushi—“_

On.

 

_“Doctor Yakushi, that is enough!”_

Off.

 

A flicker of movement in the corner of the screen. Sasuke’s eyes dart over and watches a ghost of a man enter view. Jiraiya, a version younger and far more alive than the corpse that sits and rots downstairs, leans over observation railings. His face is stormy, knuckles white. “ _You’re killing her,”_ he says sharply.

 

“ _Jiraiya’s right. Kabuto, she needs to be at least conscious for the experiment.”_

A new figure steps around Jiraiya, his gait as elegant and confident as a waltz, hair black as night. Jiraiya shoots him a filthy look behind his back as he passes, it’s almost childish in the way his nose scrunches up.

 

“ _Forgive me, Doctor Orochimaru_.” Yakushi clears his throat, skims over his clipboard. “ _As our subject is uncooperative today, I would like to introduce for record, Patient 0503. Birth name, as you surely must have realized, is Mito Uzumaki, age fifty-six, part of our experimental group. A brave volunteer for the advancement of the human race.”_

A wheeze. “ _I didn’t volunteer for this.”_

_“You should have read the full waiver,”_ Yakushi smiles, pats her on the shoulder as if she were a pet. “ _The time is 0430, I will begin conducting the test immediately.”_ He nods to Jiraiya and Orochimaru, the latter’s dark eyes are fixated on the tiny vial of blood that Kabuto spins between his fingers. As he takes a syringe out and transfers the liquid to it, Mito Uzumaki’s eyes grow wide. For the first time in the entire video, she looks afraid. Her face drains of color, her hair looks even brighter—the only spot of color in that dismal, grey laboratory.

 

“ _Don’t do this.”_ Her voice doesn’t waver, not as Kabuto swipes a disinfectant pad over her arm, nor when he presses the tip of the needle against her skin. She never spares Kabuto a glance, her bright, wise eyes bore directly into Jiraiya’s gaze. “ _I know you are better than this. You **know** this is wrong.” _ She bites back a hiss of pain as Kabuto plunges the syringe into the flesh of her arm. “ _If you let anything happen to Kushina—“_

She breaks off suddenly, gasping, chokes on her own last words, and seizes on the chair.  Kabuto curses so viciously the camera picks up the audio, and lunges for another vial. His hands are steady, but his eyes are flickering anxiously from Doctor Orochimaru—still and elegant as a statue—and over to the angry red patterns emerging on his patient’s skin. Even in the horrible video quality, Sasuke can make out every vein—capillaries rising in webs over the planes of her face as they turn from acid red to black as night. Her chest heaves, stutters, and then stills.

 

Mito Uzumaki is dead.

 

“ _Subject 0503 is deceased.”_ Kabuto clicks his tongue, almost disappointed. _“Attempt to awaken chakra was an absolute failure. Cause of death, most likely cardiac arrest and simultaneous collapse of the nervous system—just like the others, sir.”_

Orochimaru glides like a snake, his hair swings like oil on water and glimmers in the light. He looks as pale as Mito’s corpse, which lays prone on the chair. “ _A shame,”_ he says sweetly, brushing Mito’s red hair behind her ear. “ _She was promising. You knew her, Jiraiya?”_

The other man stiffens, wipes his face of any expression. “ _Distantly.”_

“ _And who’s this Kushina?”_ Orochimaru grins—it’s too sharp, reveling in the stony expression that mars Jiraiya’s face.

 

 _“Subject 0710,”_ Kabuto clips. “ _Part of the Uzushio group.”_

Orochimaru’s face lights up. “ _Oh, I know her. Namikaze is going to be assigned to her. How delightful!”_ An unseen timer goes off, tinny and static filled through the laptop speakers—a summoning. The man turns and makes his way up to the viewing level. “ _Kabuto,”_ he begins. “ _I’d like the autopsy data on my desk in two hours—“_ A pause. Jiraiya’s eyes flicker between the pair. “ _If you fail me again, you will be removed from the Kurama project and reassigned **elsewhere,** is that clear?” _

Kabuto nods slowly, Orochimaru exits the room and Jiraiya follows after him, reluctantly—eyes flickering back over to Mito Uzumaki’s corpse, which is quickly being prepped for autopsy. Doctor Yakushi sighs once in the empty room, turns on a razor and begins to shave off the corpse’s beautiful red hair.

The video cuts, Sasuke’s reflection watches him in the black gloss of the screen. Something like bile settles on the back of his tongue, acidic and tangy like the blood that leaked out of Mito Uzumaki’s mouth when she died.

 

Projects? Experiments? Sasuke swallows and clicks through the laptop, hundreds of little videos, files, neatly labeled and sorted by date and name. A database of death arranged in alphabetical order.

 

There’s a file that flashes, half the letters are missing, corrupted. _sh_r_i_gan0210autop_y.avi_ Sasuke clicks it open with a morbid curiosity.

 

The footage opens again to an operating theater, and then it stutters and skips forward. Finally straightens out in the middle of an autopsy. Kabuto stands in the pit, gloved hands stained in the dark blood of an adolescent boy who is half crushed. One entire section of his body is mangled beyond repair, from head to toe. The bones of his arm are particularly startling—clearly fragmented, shattered—little shards pierce through the mottled skin. The footage glitches again, static covers up most of the gruesome sight of the boy’s caved in skull. One of his eyes lolls listlessly; the blood that pools in his iris sloshes with the movement.

 

“ _What the fuck happened to him?”_

Kabuto glances up. “ _Oh, hello sir_ ,” he says cordially and with no respect at all. Jiraiya, older and more haunted than before, looks unconcerned, as if Kabuto’s respect and admiration were things he actively avoided. “ _I am currently trying to figure that out.”_

“ _Was he in pain?_ ” Jiraiya asks.

 

“ _Oh, is that why you’re here?”_ Kabuto hums. “ _Subject 0210 screamed the entire time_ — _a failure._ ”

 

“ _He has a name.”_

 

_“You know his name?”_

_“I know all their names.”_

_“Aw, that’s cute. What was his?”_ Kabuto croons.

_“Obito.”_

“ _Huh_ ,” Kabuto says, and methodically pulls an eye out of the boy’s skull. “ _As I was saying, little Obito here was a failure—we never should have wasted serum on someone in this condition_.”

 

Jiraiya huffs. “ _You’re almost as terrible as Orochimaru, you know that?”_

 

“ _You’ve told me that many times over the past six months, Doctor Jiraiya.”_

_“And I mean it every time.”_

_“What can I say,”_ Kabuto smirks. “ _I learned from the best. I wonder how much your former protégé is learning from Doctor Orochimaru?”_

A sore spot. Sasuke can see the way Jiraiya’s face twists even through the grainy recording. The silver haired doctor laughs. “ _Oh, by the way_ ,” he adds. An afterthought that isn’t an afterthought. “ _How is the Kurama project going? I hear many praises about the work Doctor Namikaze’s done in my place.”_

 

He’s bitter.

 

Apparently, Jiraiya is too.

 

_“That’s classified. I can **barely** talk to Minato about it, let alone you—but it’s more successful than whatever the hell Orochimaru has you doing here.”_

 

 _“He’s been interested in eyes lately,”_ and that’s all he says on the subject.

 

In the quiet, Jiraiya watches Kabuto slowly dissect the corpse of someone barely past childhood. Head shaved, Kabuto breaks into the skull with a crack of bone. Chips of it fly up and fleck against the fabric of his surgical mask. Jiraiya turns, disgusted at the sight, and starts to leave without a word.

 _“I know she’s pregnant.”_ Kabuto remarks idly. “ _Namikaze’s the father, isn’t he? Funny, that seems a little unethical.”_

Jiraiya, almost out of frame, freezes at the door. Is quiet, for a moment, and then turns around. “ _How did you find out.”_

_“Did you think I wouldn’t?”_ He chuckles. “ _You must be even more of a fool than I thought. Doctor Orochimaru is going to find out sooner or later. We both know how excited he would be to research the serum’s impact on a fetus.”_

The color drains from Jiraiya’s face. _“Are you going to tell him?”_

_“No,”_ Kabuto says contemplatively, humming in the back of his throat. “ _I have enough faith that you and Namikaze are going to fuck this up without me intervening.”_ He yanks an optical nerve cord out of the corpse’s skull, snips it delicately with a pair of sharp, gleaming scissors. “ _And believe me, the thought of seeing your face when it all falls apart is what keeps me going.”_

Jiraiya leaves the frame and there’s an echoing clatter of a door slamming. Once he’s gone, Kabuto sets down his scalpel and tugs his mask to rest against the bottom of his chin. The doctor turns and stares directly up at the security camera, blankly.  Unsettlingly on cue, the feed cuts like the snap of a jaw—sharp and jerking like the way a dull knife cuts through flesh.  

 

Mito and Kushina Uzumaki ring through Sasuke’s head. Naruto has no living relatives as far he knows, and perhaps it could be coincidence—but Uzumaki is a rare name, as uncommon as Uchiha and all its prestige. When searched on the folder system of the external drive, the name Uzumaki brings up nothing. Neither does Orochimaru or Yakushi.

 

Minato Namikaze does.

 

It’s an obituary, Sasuke realizes, carefully scanned from the original newspaper it must have been printed in. Beloved friend, the youngest scientist to be nominated for several minor science awards. Preceded in death by his parents, and leaves behind no one except his academic legacy, and a co-written book on human evolution.

 

He was twenty-four when he died in a devastating explosion that destroyed most of the state-funded laboratory that used to sit twenty miles south of Konoha. Sasuke scrolls down, Minato Namikaze grins up at him through the screen. He looked like a friendly man, good-natured, even in the poor photograph quality of the nineties, Sasuke can pick out the glint of intelligence in his eyes.

 

Naruto looks just like him. From the tilt of nose, the set of his lips and jaw, even the shade of his hair and eyes, Sasuke has the realization that perhaps Minato Namikaze left more than just a book behind in this world, and that Jiraiya roped Naruto into whatever this mess is because he looked like a ghost of a friend.

This database has nothing else for him now, and perhaps this entire house holds nothing else for the living. Jiraiya’s corpse can rot surrounded by his painful memories. Sasuke steps back, creeps downstairs into the silent house. There’s a chill in the air, and Sasuke can’t shake the feeling that he’s being watched even as he starts to drive away.

_\-----------------_

When he gets back to town, Sasuke buys an overpriced bottle of water at the gas station and sits himself on an empty bench and tries to make sense of the thoughts racing in his head. Nearby is a little ramen shop with six unimpressive stools and a rather impressive menu. It’s quiet now, in the strange time between afternoon and evening—the waitress leans idly against the counter, looking for a customer to walk by.

 

One does. Orders something to-go in a too soft voice and idles by the stand before drifting over to Sasuke’s bench.

 

“May I sit here?”

 

Sasuke glances up, squinting against the sun, and meets the eyes of a familiar man. “No,” he says automatically.

 

The man sits down anyways.

 

Kabuto Yakushi has changed much from the way Sasuke saw him in decades old surveillance videos. His hair is longer, but the glasses are the same. One of the lenses is cracked, fractals like lightning. Something is unnatural about the shade of his dark circles—too purple. They make his dark eyes sink further into the gaunt hollows of his face. He looks frayed around the edges like a rope that’s about to snap, and despite his dangerously thin appearance, Sasuke thinks he’s far more dangerous now.

 

“Danzo told us you were sticking your nose in all the wrong places. You went looking for Jiraiya, even after that entire debacle at the diner?” Kabuto rambles, no, rants. His voice is strained, high pitched and grating. Exhausted. “Really—oh don’t give me that look, I mean, both you and Uzumaki should have figured out that getting involved with Jiraiya was bad news—“

 

The plastic of the water bottle crumples in Sasuke’s hand. “What do you know about Naruto.”

 

Kabuto shrugs off Sasuke’s accusatory glare. “I know what’s in his file. ”  

 

“His file?” Sasuke starts lowly. “You took him?”

“Of course.”

 

“ ** _Why.”_**

 

“Circumstances of his birth, really it was out of his control.” Kabuto says lightly—mockingly.  “It was lucky, we never would have found him again if he hadn’t moved back here. I’m sure Jiraiya had a heart attack when he realized Naruto had come back home.”

 

“Circumstances of his birth?” Sasuke’s mind races a mile a minute, question after question. He needs to arrest this man. His hand twitches. A low rage curls in the bottom of his stomach.

 

Kabuto’s hand darts out, squeezes on Sasuke’s wrist so hard he can almost imagine the sound of his bones creaking. “Ah, not so fast. I didn’t come here to get arrested or tell you the sad story of Uzumaki’s birth. I’m here to make a deal.”

 

“A deal,” Sasuke echoes.

 

“On behalf of Mayor Shimura, if you leave this town and forget everything you saw, we’ll let you go. We don’t need you, we already have an Uchiha volunteer. You’re no use to us.”

 

“What—an Uchiha?”

 

“Your family has great genetics—fantastic eyesight. Itachi is a wonderful volunteer whenever he decides to come by.”

 

“What are you trying to do here?” Sasuke accuses. “What do you stand to gain by telling me this?”

 

Kabuto grins, looks unsettlingly like Orochimaru for a brief moment. “Oh no, that offer is from Danzo. Me? I just want the chance to rip out your eyes.”

 

The brown haired girl yells from the ramen stand and plops a carry-out bag on the counter with a gap-toothed smile. Kabuto rises fluidly and makes his way to the counter. He takes the bag and speaks to the girl in soft tones, laughing as the apples of her cheeks flush red.

 

Sasuke, frozen on the bench, watches as Kabuto leisurely walks down the street and turns the corner, and then breaks into a sprint after the man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW! It sure has been a while, life got super busy (unexpectedly for the summer), but I am back on track with writing again! Thanks for all the support! 
> 
> Heads up for you readers, but as the story progress I will be writing about some more sensitive subject matter, all of which are included in the tags for the story and I will also be posting warnings at the beginning notes of each story. It'll mostly pertain to gore, but that should be the extent of it. 
> 
> Thank you for all the comments, I am going to finish this story, and I do have it all planned out, just have some patience!


	6. Chapter 6

Sasuke rounds a corner and finds himself in the mouth of a short alley winding itself between two dilapidated buildings. One is squat little structure, chipped paint; the faded imprints of a sign say it used to be a flower shop, but the windows are empty and wilted apart from a “For Sale” sign stuck up in the corner. The lettering is faded, practically unreadable. Yamanaka Flower Shop has been for sale for a very, very long time. The other building is still in use as a family practice optometrist. A trio of “Doctor Hyuuga’s” are finely embossed on the window beneath a glasses motif. As Sasuke steps into the alley, the blinds to the wide front windows of the building violently shut.

 

Kabuto waits Idly, as if he had expected Sasuke to come barreling after him. He swings his little bag of take-out ramen from side to side, the rhythmic sound of the broth sloshing seems almost mocking. For a moment Sasuke feels the hollow weight of doubt sink into his chest, and then Kabuto smirks too wide, and a hot rush of anger floods his veins.

 

“I thought you would follow,” Yakushi begins. He rolls his shoulders and slouches, holding most of his weight on his left foot. It’s casual, Sasuke notes, far too lazy and relaxed for someone being chased by the police. The pistol at his hip hangs heavy, and Sasuke tugs it out of his holster. In the alley, the click of the safety turning off echoes too loud against the brick.

 

“I’m placing you under arrest for—“

 

“You have a warrant?” Kabuto interrupts.

 

“I—“ Sasuke sputters. “No.”

 

“Then you can’t—“

 

“It’s called arrest under probable cause, asshole,” Sasuke bites. “I don’t need a warrant.”

 

“Just testing you,” Kabuto smiles sweetly.

 

“Are you coming with me or am I going to have to force you?”

 

Laughter. “Oh, I thought you’d never ask.”

 

Kabuto darts forward, food swinging in his hand. Sasuke raises his pistol, aims it towards the other’s shoulder, but makes the mistake of looking into Kabuto’s eyes. Deep and sunken, ringed by purple skin and shadow. As unnatural as they are, something almost human glitters there.

 

_You don’t shoot civilians,_ some part of Sasuke’s mind insists. It sounds a little too much like Kakashi’s voice, and he fumbles, finger frozen on the trigger. Kabuto knocks into Sasuke roughly, sending the Uchiha flying onto his back. The concrete knocks the breath out of his chest, and sends his pistol spinning out across the ground. Yakushi drops, flinging the bag to the side, snatches the gun up and clambers atop Sasuke, pinning him down. The broth leaking from the take-out bag is warm and unpleasant against Sasuke’s hair, the chill of the pistol pressed up against his chin is even worse.

 

“You know,” Kabuto says softly. “I expected more out of you.” A pause. He leans in and whispers against Sasuke’s ear. “Uzumaki was much more fun.”

 

“Don’t fucking talk about—!” Instinct stops Sasuke’s words in his throat as Kabuto jabs the pistol roughly against his neck again. Some primal force at work trying to keep him alive.

 

“I want you to listen,” Kabuto says lowly. Up close, there is nothing remotely human in his blank stare. “I would kill you now, except I am under express orders not to. He’s hoping you’ll be promising, though I disagree.”

 

“He?” Sasuke wheezes.

 

“Orochimaru, you fool. Stop interrupting me. You have one day to get out of this town, or, alternatively, you have one day to try to find me before I find you.”

 

Kabuto raises his free hand, twisting his fingers into a strange symbol. Right before Sasuke’s eyes, he melts away into a swirl of leaves and smoke—taking Sasuke’s pistol with him.

 

Sasuke blinks. Once. Twice. Reels upwards and searches in panic. _Where the hell did he go?_

There’s no sign of Kabuto apart from the fallen container of miso ramen. The smell clings to Sasuke’s soaked hair and coat.

 

He’s gone. Sasuke clambers up, ignores the tremor in his hands, and walks through the alley, running his hand along the bricks—searching for some way, some exit Kabuto could have disappeared through in broad daylight.

 

Nothing. Sasuke finds absolutely no clue, no sign, and feels like a fool. When he exits the alley in defeat, the blinds of Hyuuga’s Optometry flick open. A pair of colorless eyes blink at him and then turn away from the window.

 

Reeking of miso, Sasuke makes the trek back to his car, and drives back to the run-down motel. Mind blank, he showers until the water turns ice-cold and his fingers prune. It’s only when he steps out that Sasuke realizes it’s started to rain. A clap of thunder echoes through the room, echoes through his mind.

 

Finally, Sasuke begins to process everything, and the first thing that pops into his mind is: Leaving is not an option.

 

**Leaving Naruto is not an option.**

 

The problem is, Sasuke thinks snidely to himself, is that he doesn’t know where to start looking.

Another thought, more panicked, ~~afraid,~~ wonders, _Where the fuck did Kabuto go?_

 

That thought gets shoved away—violently, viciously—what matters is Naruto, Naruto, Naruto. A mantra in his head.

 

“Fuck,” Sasuke says to himself. “What am I going to do.”

 

Unsaid: _Where do I even start looking?_

Lost in thought, Sasuke barely catches the faint knock on the door amid the loud crashes of thunder. He rises from his seat, eyeing it warily. As he approaches the door, Sasuke’s hand twitches down towards his empty holster.

 

The knock sounds again—faint and soft, gentle in a way that almost seems soothing. Sasuke swings the door wide open, inviting in the wind and rain.

 

Naruto’s neighbor, Hinata, stands hunched and sopping wet in the doorway. Her dark hair is plastered against her forehead, unsettling eyes blinking up at him. “M-may I come in? Please?”

 

Nodding wordlessly, Sasuke lets the girl into the tiny motel room. She shivers so violently that water shakes off of her.

 

“Why are you here?” Sasuke asks bluntly, attempting to keep his tone from becoming harsh. “Is this about Naruto?”

 

Hinata opens her mouth, shuts it as if she doesn’t know where to begin. “I—I saw what happened in the alley.”

 

The eyes in the window. “Did you see where the white-haired man went?” Sasuke steps forward eagerly. “Kabuto Yakushi is his name. How did he disappear?”

 

“He—he just melted away, but that’s not i-important. I think…I think I know where he went.”

 

Melted away. Hearing someone else say it is a grim confirmation of the unnatural occurrence Sasuke wishes was some sort of twisted dream, some weird imagination. An impossibility made real.

 

“I-in the woods,” She begins again, wringing at her fingers. “There’s an old laboratory. Half of it blew up decades ago but—it’s not abandoned. People are still up there. Doing things.”

 

Sasuke narrows his eyes and leans forward, Hinata’s eyes flinch away. “Things?”

 

“I—uh, tests. Experiments. I think he went there,” she pauses, mouth tight. “He—I…I think Naruto might be there too…”

“Naruto?”

 

“I-I think so. There’s no other place where he could be, unless he was--”

 

_~~Dead~~. _

 

“And you knew? The whole time?” Sasuke’s voice rises in a mix of frustration and desperation, and immediately Hinata steps back in fear. Eyes wide, her lip quivering, her body shrinks and hunches forward protectively. Bile rises in the back of Sasuke’s throat, it tastes like shame.

 

He feels like his brother.

 

“You’re afraid.”

 

“Y-yes,” Hinata breathes shakily. Sasuke steps back to give her space.

 

“Of me?”

 

Taking a deep breath, she blinks the tears out of her odd eyes. Calmed. “No. Not of you.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew where Naruto was?”

 

Sasuke falls back to sit on the bed, like a silent sign, Hinata settles in a chair by the door. She fidgets idly with the sleeves of her sweater, the soaked fabric likely chafing at her skin. “T-they watch the whole town, they probably know I’m here right now.”

 

“They?”

 

“I don’t know who they are—all I know is that they’re dangerous,” she pauses, eyes flickering to the drawn window.

 

“Why didn’t you go to the cops?”

 

“Y-you can’t trust them. Not here.”

 

“And you trust me?”

 

“Enough to risk my life. I—I think you want Naruto to be found and they…don’t.”

 

That at least makes sense. The apathy of the police station, the attitude of the mayor. “Do you know where the lab is?”

 

Hinata jolts, blank eyes meeting his. “W-what?”

 

“The lab,” Sasuke repeats. “Do you know where it is? If I can’t go to the police, I’ll have to go myself.”

 

She bites her lip, eyes flitting down. “I-I can tell you how to get there…but I won’t go with you.”

 

“Understandable,” Sasuke responds, leaning back and waiting for her to continue.

 

“Uh, I--,” Hinata fidgets. “You’ll need to take the highway south, half an hour I think. T-there’s an exit, it’s unmarked—they took down the sign when it…b-blew up. But, the road is still open, and the lab is at the end of it.”

 

“Thanks,” Sasuke nods curtly, fishing his keys out of his pockets.

 

“Wait, a-are you going right now?” Hinata’s blind eyes widen, hands twisting the fabric of her sleeves in a vice grip.

 

“No time like the present,” Sasuke clips.

 

She pauses, brows furrowed. “C-could I stay here? As long as it’s o-okay with you. If they knew what I told you…this would be the last place they would look for me.”

 

Sasuke thinks back to the sharp-eyed receptionist, the way she watched him. “It’s not safe here, but I know somewhere you can go. Come with me.”

 

He stands, tugging his coat on. It smells faintly like broth still, the taste of salt and meat lingering on the fabric of the collar. Naruto smelled like that sometimes, reeking of Styrofoam cups and microwaved broth.

 

Sasuke leaves the motel room first, waiting for Hinata to follow, and locks the room with a soft click. The rain is torrential. A thick sheet audibly slamming onto the hood of his car. Sasuke darts out, Hinata chasing his heels as she scurries for the passenger door.

 

Inside, the car roars with the sound of rain banging against the roof, shaking it with the force of thunder. Sasuke turns the ignition, the radio sputters with static, and spits out a song from some distant station.

 

Pulling out of the nearly empty parking lot, Sasuke begins the quick drive through down.

 

“Have you ever been there?” At Hinata’s inquisitive look, he continues. “The laboratory, I mean.”

 

Hinata glances down, her hair sliding against her face like a dark curtain. Lips pursed, hands twisting, she opens her mouth and then pauses. “Once. I—they took me years ago as punishment.”

 

Quiet again, her brow furrows. “M-my father and his brother were looking into things that they shouldn’t.”

 

“But you came back.”

 

“My uncle didn’t.”

 

Hinata is a ghost in the passenger seat, her blank eyes glowing in the dim blue lights of the dashboard.  “And--I don’t think part of me ever came back either...”

 

“I’m sorry,” Sasuke says in the silence. It sounds oddly sincere, even for him.

 

“T-thanks.” She sounds on the verge of tears, and Sasuke lets the conversation drop. Hinata turns towards the window, forehead pressed against the glass.

 

The short drive comes to a close when Sasuke pulls into the parking lot of the diner. The bright, warm lights are a welcome sight in the dark rain. More importantly, the place is dry, and when the pair of them enter, Sasuke almost feels bad for dripping water all over the tile floor.

 

As they enter, Hinata freezes when she catches sight of the group of old men in the corner, Mayor Shimura at the head of the table. Sasuke hooks her arm in his and walks up to the bar, nearly dragging her until she comes back to herself, whipping her head around so fast water flies off her hair.

 

Behind the counter, Shizune stands, brewing a fresh pot of coffee. Her eyes widen at the sight of Sasuke and Hinata.  

 

“Can you keep her safe for the night?” Sasuke leans forward, voice dropping to a whisper and wearing a forced smile.

 

Shizune’s warm, dark eyes flicker across the diner to Tenten, effortlessly balancing a crowded tray against the palm of her hand. She nods, almost imperceptibly, buns bobbing with the movement as she leans down towards the table with a smile.

 

“Ah, Hinata!” Shizune cries, grabbing Hinata’s hands over the counter. The benefit of a small town is that everybody knows everybody. “I’m so glad you made it for your interview!  I was getting worried!”

 

Startled, Hinata’s face flushes with color, “A-ah, I’m so sorry I’m late! I-I was caught in the rain.”

 

“Oh, you poor dear, how nice of Mr. Uchiha here to help you out!”

 

Momentarily channeling his best impression of Gai, Sasuke puts on his most charming smile—the kind Itachi used to use to flatter his teachers, “It was my pleasure.”

 

Nothing more trustworthy than your friendly neighborhood cop. Do-gooder extraordinaire, it’s what makes Gai so popular with the civilians.

 

And still, he can almost feel the burning stare of the Mayor and his cronies behind him. They’ve gone silent, scrutinizing. The intensity is so palpable the hairs on Sasuke’s neck stand up, quivering.

 

Tenten sets down the last plate of eggs on their table, and the bright conversation resumes immediately. Her shoes click against the linoleum, and she grins at Hinata.

 

“Tenten here will show you around the kitchen and give you the first part of the interview,” Shizune says. “I’ll be over once I finish this next order.”

 

Hinata mouths a silent thanks at Sasuke as Tenten whisks her away.

 

“So, why do you want to work at the diner?”  

 

“I-I don’t think working with my dad is very good for me…”

 

Tenten’s face takes on a softer quality. “Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you here,” she links her arm with Hinata’s, rounding a corner into the kitchen. “So, how’s Neji?”

 

Sasuke turns, business finished, and makes for the door. As he passes, the old men hush, the Mayor’s gaze burns with the intensity of one hundred eyes, even as Sasuke gets in his car.

 

He can almost still feel them as he drives away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woooo!! sorry for the wait, but here's the newest chapter! I hope you enjoy and the next chapter is in the works!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is a repost/rewrite of an older fic that I had working on. This story is going to be including a lot of graphic content and violence (at the hands of Orochimaru) and will cover upsetting topics. I will be including warnings for every chapter that includes this type of content, though that should not be for a couple more chapters. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy, thanks for reading!


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